Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, Serbia

PRESENTATION TITLE:  PHILOSOPHICAL PESSIMISM AND ETHICAL LIVING IN PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE

Abstract: Philosophical pessimism is often portrayed as a dark and depressing theoretical vista that stands in sharp contrast with optimism as a key precondition for success in psychotherapy and counselling. In his most influential work, Irvin Yalom lists optimism as the very first and most important factor for successful psychotherapy. This lecture questions the assumption that optimism is good or necessary in therapy. To the contrary, I argue that in fact philosophical pessimism is a better founded and more productive normative structure for achieving deep and lasting results in counselling on various levels. In the course of this argument, I suggest that philosophical pessimism has an important conceptual core that lies within the metaphysics of personality, namely the assumption of unchangeability and incorribility of character. This assumption presents various challenges to philosophical practice and to theoretical philosophy, some of which lead to potentially positive and hopeful, rather than negative and depressing, conclusions. Philosophical pessimism, in this light, is an emancipatory, rather than inhibitory, philosophical framework for counselling and for practical life more generally.

Biography: Aleksandar Fatić is Professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and Director of the Institute for Practical Humanities in Belgrade. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the Australian National University and is the author of numerous books and articles on philosophical psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophical practice, and related topics. His most recent books include Philotherapy: An Integration of Psychotherapy, Lexington Press of Rowman and Littlefield, Laynham, 2023 and Virtue as Identity: Emotions and the moral personality, Rowman and Littlefield International, London, 2016. His two most recent papers are ‘Narcissism as a moral incompetence’, forthcoming, along with a symposium with the response to critics entitled ‘Why narcissists are morally responsible’, in Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, 2023.